


We’ll Meet Again

by alyyks



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Temporary Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Japanese Shiro (Voltron), Kuron (Voltron) Deserved Better, Mentioned Haggar (Voltron), Mentioned Lotor (Voltron), Mentions of Shiro (Voltron)'s illness, Panic Attacks, Quantum Abyss (Voltron), Reincarnation of a sort, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, Voltron: Legendary Defender Season/Series 06, Voltron: Legendary Defender Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 20:46:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15804273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyyks/pseuds/alyyks
Summary: Shiro died, Shiro was beloved of things beyond the comprehension of mortals, Shiro came back.He did not come back as a human.---The one where Shiro and Kosmo are one and the same.





	We’ll Meet Again

**Author's Note:**

> I saw that post floating on tumblr: http://szzzt-captain.tumblr.com/post/177101292414/crack-theory-shiro-was-actually-supposed-to-be which in summary says that Shiro was supposed to be Kosmo in s7, I thought it an interesting fic idea, seven days and twenty hours of train later there was a fic.
> 
> Dedicated to the enablers on the chat. You know who you are ;)

It was a dangerous position to be in, to be beloved of things beyond the comprehension of mortals.  
  
Shiro died—or at least, his body did, vanishing in the in-between where the Black Lion could slide through the world, where reality disappeared. His body vanished but his spirit, what made him him, his soul, got caught, was saved.  
  
Humans were not supposed to live beyond their bodies. They had no frame of reference, no possibility of understanding. It was too much for anyone, for Shiro, to keep themselves intact on their own.  
  
The Black Lion held on to him as best as it could, kept him as safe as he could be. As safe as can be was not _safe_ , was not free of harm and intact. Some things slipped, out and through: knowledge, abilities, memories, from the Black Lion to Shiro, from Shiro into nothingness. The Black Lion was big and old and beyond the comprehension of humans, was never anything like human. Holding a spirit within itself that it was almost too big to see and touch was dangerous. It could not grasp the importance of what went away, what was lost bit by bit. Still it knew that the time of its Paladin, all that made him him, the bright spark and the drive and the understanding of death nipping at his heels, was counted.  
  
Something had to be done.  
  
The decision of what and how, however, was taken out of the Black Lion’s metaphorical hands.  
  
In the universe at large, time did not stop because one man, however his importance, disappeared. There were schemes centuries in the making finally paying off, a war going hot, factions tearing each other apart; and in the middle, a coalition holding on the shoulders of a handful of people.  
  
Haggar, once named Honerva, Altean Alchemist turned more, turned _other_ by what slipped in the cracks of the universe, reached Oriande on the trail of the man she had once called son. She reached and found and took power and knowledge given only to those who could wield and comprehend it. It was, after all, things beyond the comprehension of mortals, and Haggar had been more than that for centuries.  
  
The backlash of that power and knowledge thrummed through all the links she had created, one of them the human who thought himself to be Shirogane Takashi, the fourth Black Paladin after Zarkon, after the original Shirogane Takashi, after Keith. The human who thought himself to be Shirogane Takashi could not take either knowledge or power, pain wrecking through him, a cry for help through the open mindlink with the Black Lion his only desperate attempt to survive the onslaught.  
  
Here was a chance, here was a possibility of saving his Paladin: the Black Lion rode the surge, absorbed power and knowledge and the maelstrom of pain in the human who thought himself to be Shirogane Takashi, and it sent Shiro’s essence, what was left of him, to safety, honed on the distant star of its third Paladin.  
  
The Black Paladin and the Red Paladin, after all, shared a special bond.    
  
+++  
  
He had a parent who loved him. If Shiro had the full extent of his personality and memories, this alone… this alone could have made dying, losing his human body and his sense of self worth it. He had a parent who loved him without reservation, who licked his eyes open when his body was only a few minutes old and still sticky with birthing fluid, and who nudged him to teach him how to use his legs to walk unsteadily, and who brought him food, and who caught him by the scruff of his neck once he knew how to walk and run when he strayed too far, too fast for his size, away from the hide holes in the asteroid belt they called home and the warmth of his siblings.  
  
Shiro had a body again, one that used all four legs to walk and was covered in fur and could see and hear and smell more than he was ever able to, one where _nothing hurt_. Nothing faltered or tensed without his control, nothing hurt. That was what he knew first, before his name, before memories of another life: the absence of pain was not a given, it was a gift, a relief, a blessing.  
  
Shiro was very aware he was not like his siblings or his parent, even if he was not completely aware of who he was—or who he had been?—yet. His coloring and his abilities were different than his siblings’. For all that all of them could jump like comets between the stars that were their home, navigating currents of solar particles and quintessence in the black, he could jump further, more often, for longer period of times. He could teleport in a way none of them could. He was growing faster than them, those loved dust-dark and star-bright balls of fur and drool and warmth and safety he slept in a pile with, their parent guarding over their sleep, always.  
  
Time was not a concern, or even a concept he had any awareness of, until Shiro—who knew his name was Shiro then, had been Shiro before too, the knowledge he had been different before still hazy in his mind—was taken aside by his parent when he just old enough to be independent. The wolves didn’t quite speak, not like humans did, and it was through a human understanding that Shiro remembered his parent’s words, their blessing: “Your path dwells with the stars. We cannot force you to go, but keeping you with us would be selfish.” His parent nuzzled him, licked at his muzzle, at the rough bit of fur at his shoulder that never laid quite flat. “My cub, my child...you are more. Never forget who you are, and where you come from. In your travels, we are with you, always.”  
  
And bolstered by the love of his parent, Shiro picked his heading, nose and ears raised to the stars he had always lived and longed for. There was a link, hanging at the edge of his awareness, a direction, someone waiting for him. He jumped, becoming one more errant star.  
  
+++  
  
Keith knew full well there was more going with the wolf than met the eye from the moment he saved him from the spider-crab creatures. He had lived in the desert for a long time, where he had relayed on hunting the odd deer and rabbit for survival, where he was followed by coyotes, where he had heard and seen the pack of wolves that held territory further in the hills and canyons. Since then, since he left Earth on the Blue Lion to live and fight in space, he had seen quite a lot more. There had been alien beings and animals and other things he didn't have the vocabulary for, limited by english and the scraps of common galra he had picked up. He didn’t have a better summary of those experiences other that animals acted like animals, even when they were more than earth animals, like the altean mouses on the castle. He learned quite fast how to tell what was in front of him was not an animal or something else but a person, signs and hints that he learned to read as more than gut instincts and survival mechanisms.  
   
The wolf, for all he sometimes acted on what looked like earth dog instincts to Keith, was definitively a person.  
  
Krolia tore another piece of flesh from the hunk of meat she had deemed cooked enough, on the other side of the firepit where Keith’s share of meat was still roasting. She stared at the wolf letting himself be fed and Keith feeding him, chewing with a pensive expression on her face.  
  
“Something the matter?” Keith asked, glancing at her.  
  
“I’ve never seen a wolf species like this one. It’s hard to know everything that exists in the universe, but creatures who live in space and can potentially be hazards on the space lanes are well documented.”  
  
The wolf had came to the space whale like a meteorite, leaving a crater in his wake. He had been unarmed. He seemed to breathe the same atmosphere Krolia and Keith could breath, but what had he used in outer space?  
  
“I don’t think he’s a creature,” Keith replied. The wolf nosed at his finger, licking the traces of meat juice before whining low in his throat. Keith turned to him: “Are you still hungry?”  
  
The wolf barked, sitting back on its haunches and licking his muzzle.  
  
“What would he be if not a creature?” Krolia asked while Keith sliced another piece of meat.  
  
“A person—a thinking being,” Keith said, reformulating his answer half-way. He didn’t know how the translation would take care of things. The slice of meat he held to the wolf was quickly grabbed and eaten.  
  
“You mean he’s like you or me,” Krolia said, and it was not a question. Her teeth looked very, very sharp in the flickering light of the fire—as sharp as the wolf’s, who was now chewing a stick as if cleaning them.  
  
Keith took his part of the meal, finally cooked enough that he wouldn’t have a problem digesting it. The wolf leaned against his leg, and his body was warm even through Keith’s suit.  
  
His mother was in front of him, the wolf was at his side; they had food and water and air, and they had a mission. Keith felt his shoulders lose their tension tick by tick.  
  
This was where he was supposed to be.  
  
+++  
  
On a few nights during their journey—how do you count the days and nights on the back of a space whale in deep space—and without really knowing how, or which circumstances were gathered to allow him to do so, Shiro managed to slip into Keith's dreams. He could not sit as close to Keith as his physical body could, tucked close against Keith’s spine; he had no sense of touch like this, no strength to his projection. He missed touch, being able to put his hand on Keith’s shoulder.  
  
He always had the last human body he had, one flesh hand, one metal hand, sometimes covered by his armor, sometimes by Keith’s father’s clothes that were the only clothing he had taken to space. He had wondered, the first couple times it had happened and could remember that yes, this was his body too, why it wasn’t his uniform, or his riding jacket, why thinking about them didn’t allow him to change his appearance.  
  
Sometimes when Shiro slept tucked next to Keith then around then used as a pillow and blanket all at once as he grew to his final size, he didn't really sleep. He was somewhere else, somewhere full of stars that felt like a place he was in for a long time but didn't remember well anymore. There was often an echo there, a shadow, someone very, very alone who never spoke.  
  
Shiro didn’t keep track of the days or lack thereof, but he kept the rhythm of the flashes of light coming from the abyss to mind. He might not have been able to talk to them, but he could comfort Krolia and Keith by just being there when they saw something they were not ready for in the flashes, their scent acrid with fear, sadness, anger, when they talked in stilted conversations about the abruptly shared memories, giving off salt and water, giving off the warm bubbly feeling of laughter and fondness.  
  
The flashes never brought anything to Shiro; he only witnessed the aftermath of the others’. Maybe if he had been affected by the flashes, he would have recovered the pieces of himself he was still growing into as his body grew faster—maybe it would have been too fast, and it would have hurt more. Recovering the pieces of himself he was still missing was both gradual and immediate, knowledge and memories slotting in in the tapestry of his being like they had always been there.  
  
Shiro knew from the first time he met Keith that he would leave him one day because he would be dead, his body giving out on him or an impossible to predict event killing him off-planet. He had gotten a second chance at cheating death staring at him in the face by escaping the Galra and crashing back to Earth and Keith finding him in the desert, and a third, impossible chance here and now, finding Keith in the immensity of space through the bond they had shared as Black Paladins and as themselves. Shiro might not have been human anymore, probably hadn't been since he was picked up by the galra the first time, and still he was not giving up on Keith. If it translated at something like separation anxiety until he grew into his body and abilities—and hadn’t the teleportation been a surprise for Keith and Krolia, one Shiro took full advantage of to regularly jump on Keith from unseen directions—well, it was hardly a surprise, was it?  
  
“What else are you hiding?” Krolia asked him one day-night-arbitrary length of time, her hand in his scruff and scratching just hard enough in the right way to push him into drowsing. Keith was on the other side of their shelter, watching them. Temperature changes weren’t something Shiro was having to deal with much anymore. It felt like touch being-to-being had replaced it. There was a texture, a resonance to living beings his body was picking up much better now.  
  
He cocked back an ear in answer, just enough to show he had heard her. Shiro liked Krolia, a little despite himself. Yes, he had been overjoyed when he had realized she was Keith’s mother and that they had been reunited; on the other hand he remembered very well a younger Keith staring at the desert, his clothes full of dust, telling him it had always only been him and his father living out there. The Blade of Marmora could have…but they couldn’t have done anything, couldn’t have left a message, a trace, let Krolia visit. It would have put Keith in danger, Krolia in danger, the Blade of Marmora, the Blue Lion, the entire Earth.  
  
Shiro hated that he understood those decisions and knew he would make the same ones in that situation. Being a wolf was often simpler.  
  
“He’ll tell us in time,” Keith said after a long time, when it was clear Shiro wouldn’t make a noise or surprise them by talking—not that he could. “His teleporting reminds me of what the Black Lion can do.”  
  
“Have you seen it?”  
  
“Only a couple of times,” Keith said, his eyes lost in the flames. “When Shiro fought Zarkon.”  
  
When Shiro died, and the thought was enough to make a shudder run through him. He padded to Keith’s side, pushing his face with his snout until Keith moved and put his arms around him. He had died and he was there and he wasn’t leaving Keith again.  
  
“Your friend, Shiro… he’s a good man,” Krolia said.  
  
Keith nodded in Shiro’s scruff. What had they seen in the flashes? Had Krolia seen Shiro demonstrate driving off a cliff to Keith? Had she seen the consequences of being selected for Kerberos and how much of a mess Shiro had tried not to be? Had she seen how he hadn’t done anything more than stand by when Kolivan ran Keith through his trials?  
  
“The best,” Keith agreed. “I still don’t know what he saw…he never gave up on me. Since dad, he was the only person to just… be there. I didn’t have to earn his friendship, or his time, or his love. He was choosing to give it to me anyway.”  
  
Shiro licked the taste of salt off Keith’s face. Keith let him.  
  
+++  
  
Shiro was fully grown into his body and memories, knew he had parts missing, knew he had many, many months of new memories to treasure, the day Krolia warned them they were almost to their destination. They had seen the black circle of it loom inexorably for several cycles of the flash of lights, the equivalent of months if Shiro thought back on it and counted the cycles.  
  
The abyss yawned before them, and the whales went through without changing their speed, space and stars distorting around them. On the other side, once they passed through whatever the abyss really was, was a planet with a single moon, rust red and ominous, feeling like pain to Shiro’s senses that were attuned to quintessence and solar winds. The whales went down to the surface at the same leisurely pace they had used until now, as if atmospheric re-entry wasn’t something to worry about, following currents to the same quintessence source Krolia was tracking with her suit.  
  
Going from an inhospitable, battered planet to the facility and the artificial environment was something of a shock. The architecture was Galra, but the transition looked like the holoroom in the Castle of Lions before it was corrupted. Shiro took point, nose in the air, Keith and Krolia on his tail. This whole site had been hidden with great pains by someone, or a group, and it had not been done recently.  
  
When they came across the person they would later learn was called Romelle, Shiro froze in surprise just as Keith and Krolia did.  
  
The next time he froze, in the moon’s facility, it was in horror and pain.  
  
+++  
  
The atmosphere in the altean shuttle was subdued. Romelle had fallen silent in the back shortly after take-off. Re-synchronizing temporal systems was the affair of a few seconds. Krolia and Keith exchanged a glance, and Keith saw the wolf look at the numbers too.  
  
“It has been only a couple weeks—where is Lotor now?”  
  
Keith didn’t wonder why his mother had chosen to use Earth time-measure, too busy remembering the last message he had had from Shiro and the Castle; two years ago for him, only three weeks or so for the rest of the universe. “He was working with Allura before I left to find you. Going back to the castle would be our best bet: if Lotor isn’t still onboard, Allura and Shiro will know where he is exactly.”  
  
He inputed the coordinates quickly, Krolia checking the systems. Two years of living and training together had given them a coordination he only had with Shiro, before Voltron and the mindscape of the Lions.  
  
“On the bright side, getting there won’t take us two years.”  
  
Keith huffed a laugh at Krolia’s quip. He glanced behind him. The wolf was in front of Romelle, sitting back on his haunches. Romelle was holding her hand up, uncertain. She looked up, and their eyes met.  
  
“What is his name?” She asked Keith.  
  
“He didn’t tell me yet,” he answered.  
  
“But he’s a wolf, your wolf,” Romelle said, confused. “Aren’t you the one giving him a name?”  
  
“He’s himself,” Keith replied. “We should get to the Castle in a couple of days. Coran and Allura will be very surprised and happy to meet you.”  
  
Romelle lowered her hand, her gaze to the floor. When she raised her head again, her eyes blazed with rage. “I’m looking forward to meeting them, and to burn Lotor down.”  
  
“Atta girl,” Krolia said in english, teeth bared. “That’s the spirit.”  
  
+++  
  
Shiro jumped out of the shuttle behind Romelle and stared. Coran, Pidge, Lance and Hunk were waiting for them—Coran, Pidge, Lance and Hunk and _someone who was wearing his face_ , someone like the hallucinations of himself Haggar had weaved when he had fought the witch. Nightmares and deeply buried insecurities bubbled back. By the reactions and questions directed at Keith, Krolia, Romelle and him, and by Keith’s reaction to the man who was wearing Shiro’s human face, they all thought he was Shiro.  
  
Shiro wasn’t aware he could have a panic attack as a wolf, but this was what it felt like. He couldn’t _think_.  
  
The other Shiro quickly stopped the mounting questions and rising tensions in the group with a few words. Shiro wanted nothing more than to walk to Keith and take comfort by touching him, but it meant going closer to the other Shiro. He was not ready for this.  
  
He was not ready to have been replaced by an identical model, to have his existence as himself ultimately useless. This, this was the sum of all the fears he had kept under lock and key since his diagnosis, being nothing. Shiro couldn’t _think_. He had to have made a noise, as Krolia turned to him while the others were starting to leave the hangar. Whatever she saw made her stop and turn, walking back to him.  
  
“What is it?” She asked. Shiro didn’t stop to contemplate his actions, only reacted, crowding her so that he was touching as much of her as he could. Krolia was safe. “Whoa!” She exclaimed, before crouching and putting her arms around him. “What’s the matter? Is there something wrong with the ship?”  
  
Yes or no questions. That he could do. He shook his head above her shoulder, immediately trying to hide his head in her chest.  
  
“Is he okay?” He heard from Romelle, from Lance further away. Shiro felt himself shake, claws clicking against the metal floor.  
  
“Keith!” Krolia called, her hands running through his fur in a pattern that reminded him distantly of his parent but had no soothing effect.  
  
And then he smelled Keith, felt his arms around him, and this was good, Keith wouldn’t let him go. Shiro shook and panted and whined low in his throat.  
  
“What’s happening to him? Does he not like the ship?” Pidge, that was Pidge—  
  
“I don’t know, he’s never reacted like that,” Keith said, words muffled against fur.  
  
“If that was a human I’d say he’s having a panic attack,” Pidge, again, “but my experience is with one earth dog and rather limited.”  
  
Being held by Keith was enough. Shiro started to slump against him, harsh breaths coming through his nose, panicked thoughts pushed aside. “That’s it,” Keith said with long stroke of his hand from head to shoulder, “You’re okay, you’re alright, I’m here with you and I’m not going anywhere.”  
  
The group of the other paladins waited for them at the exit, leaving them their space. Shiro looked at them, at those cadets who became team who became friends and invaluable Coran and the man who was wearing his human face.  
  
“If your wolf is okay, let’s go to the bridge to wait for Allura and Lotor,” the other Shiro said. “We’re not expecting them for a couple more hours, and I think we’d all like some explanations.”  
  
“Starting with your looks!” Lance said.  
  
Shiro breathed, and took a step back from Keith. He was okay, he was good. They had more to worry about than him—they had Lotor to get an explanation from, closure for Romelle, the end of Keith and Krolia’s mission. He took another shaky step back. When they all went to the bridge, he stayed behind Keith, his eyes on the other Shiro.  
  
Seeing Krolia greet him like other Shiro was Shiro was another thing. Hearing her acknowledge the place he had in Keith’s life but to the wrong person was surreal. For an instant, Shiro wondered if he really was there, or he was seeing someone’s else life playing in front of him. It was not a pleasant experience. He took a step closer to Keith while Romelle told her story, paying only half-attention to it—he had heard it before. He was more interested in the others’ reactions, beyond Lance’s loud disbelief.  
  
For all he looked for flaws, for blatant acting, the other Shiro reacted like Shiro would have reacted as a human: he listened to Romelle and put things together and gave the final order on their plan of attack.  
  
When Lotor and Allura came back abroad and came to the bridge, Shiro stood firmly between Keith and the Other Shiro, ready to grab Allura and teleport her beyond Lotor’s reach if the occasion arose. Given the tensions heightened anew in the room, there was a good risk he would get shot or get Allura shot before or during the attempt.  
  
His help wasn’t needed, in the end: Allura took Lotor down herself.  
  
They didn’t have the time to congratulate themselves. While the alarms rang for an intrusion, the other Shiro had some kind of attack, falling to his knees with his head in his hands. The currents around him were wrong, more wrong than on Romelle’s planet, on the facility. Shiro felt all his hair raise up, doubling his physical size, ready to attack whatever was coming.  
  
What was next was the other Shiro attacking the paladins at the same time Keith, Krolia and Pidge ran to intercept the intruders. Shiro could only bark in warning as the other Shiro came after them, leaving the bridge with Lotor over his shoulder. Keith, Krolia and Pidge were too focused on running to the galran ships waiting in the hangar to see the other Shiro gaining on them like a machine.  
  
Shiro grabbed Pidge to get her further to safety when the second ship started firing on them, Keith and Krolia jumping to cover but quickly stunned by the blast. Pidge was the only one of them to be together enough to see other Shiro running past them with Lotor over his shoulder. She was the one to run after him in the open, bayard at the ready.  
  
They still left. Shiro was not proud of himself for the way he had frozen, still shaky at the prospect of getting anywhere near the other Shiro. As soon as the shuttle cleared the hangar, he ran to Keith and Krolia, checking they were all right.  
  
Keith took charge, called the others to be ready to form Voltron. Shiro felt, distantly, that he should have felt something like pride at being there to see Keith stepping up to the mantle of Black Paladin and leader of Voltron he had always known he could do.  
  
Less distantly, he was all too aware Keith was leaving the Castle and Shiro couldn’t follow him.  
  
“Let’s go back to the bridge,” Krolia said. “We can keep in audio contact and help up there.”  
  
Shiro made a noise. Help? How could he? The controls in the Castle were not made for non-opposable thumbs. There was nothing he could do, only stand back and wait and regardless of which body he had he had never been good at that.  
  
Krolia crouched, held his head between her hands, claws scratching reassuringly under his ears. “You’re panicking again. Trust Keith to know what he’s doing, trust the Paladins to know what they are doing.”  
  
Shiro closed his eyes, took a breath.  
  
“Better,” Krolia praised, hands firm on his fur. “You did a good job grabbing the green Paladin. Humans are a lot less resistant than me or Keith.”  
  
Didn’t Shiro know that, remembered pain and bruises he had learned to ignore in order to keep living, keep fighting. He took one more breath, opened his eyes. He nudged Krolia’s hand in thanks.  
  
Watching Voltron fight the Galra ships without the possibility of doing anything was torture. By Coran’s, Krolia’s and Romelle’s reactions, he wasn’t the only one feeling helpless and hating it. Keith followed the shuttle through the wormhole using a move only he could have thought about, using the force of dispelling Voltron to propel the Black Lion faster; a brilliant move, but one that left Keith going alone and out of reach of backup.  
  
Shiro was not happy to be proved right on the out of reach when the team came back onboard and Allura searched and couldn’t find either Keith or the other Shiro. He trusted this team, those brilliant, stubborn people, but they needed somewhere to start from; and so far, after coming back onboard and starting repairs on the Lions, they were stalled. They had no idea as to the motivations of the other Shiro, the conversations about it going at it without anyone seeming to be willing to really talk about it. From the pieces Shiro gathered, the other Shiro had seemed to be on Lotor’s side from the beginning. Nobody had said “sleeping or double agent” yet, but that was what the situation was pointing at. It was a classic move: infiltrate the other side with a trusted agent—here, someone with his human face and his abilities—put them in a place to provide assistance in the eventuality of an operation going south for the other side, strike when it was the least expected, sow distrust and discord if straight up taking the other side from the inside wasn’t the ultimate goal.  
  
The other Shiro could have killed them when he took Lotor offboard. It was disquieting to think about, but it needed to be faced.  
  
The lights on the bridge went down. In the span of a few seconds, they watched Coran calling essential systems shutting down one after the other, while Pidge attempted to circumvent the virus that was taking over the Castle.  
  
Shiro growled low in his throat. No, no, the other Shiro hadn’t needed to stop to kill them when taking Lotor out of the Castle. By the calculations going almost too fast on the side of the main screen, the castle was destabilizing its course toward the largest body around, gravity taking hold. The addition of a couple of engines going off would give them enough speed in only a few minutes of burn to miss orbiting speed and turn the castle into a guided inert missile crashing straight to the surface. There was no reason to take the time to kill them individually when the other Shiro or Lotor could leave a kill protocol wiping them all out at once, with not enough time to evacuate.    
  
The lights turned blue again. It was just a short breather before the process started anew, faster. When everything shut down for good on the bridge, Coran delivered the last blow: “If the teludav’s regulator shuts down, everything in this system and the neighboring ones would be wiped out.”  
  
No time to evacuate and no place to evacuate. Shiro’s mind was running wild, taking their situation through all angles. Pidge, Coran and Hunk were their best bet. This was a technological problem on large scale, not one for the pilots like him and Lance, not one for the fighters and diplomates like Allura.  
  
Pidge jumped off her seat and started running toward the heart of the castle. Shiro followed a beat later.  
  
“Where—?” they could hear Hunk calling after them.  
  
Shiro teleported next to her.  
  
“No time to play,” she told him. “Unless—can you teleport me to the teludav’s chamber?”  
  
Shiro barked, grabbed her arm in his mouth carefully, and did just that.  
  
“Whoa, thanks buddy,” Pidge said. Shiro took a step back. It was her show now.  
  
By the time the others arrived, Pidge had several screens running. When she explained what was going on, he stood, frozen. The code had been in his arm—when they had been looking for Galra installations, it was still him then, not the other Shiro. All along… all along his body had been used.  
  
The floor shook and hummed under them while Pidge worked. Lance and Allura couldn’t stop the panic from leaking into their voices. When Pidge’s shoulders slumped, Shiro felt his heart constrict. A beat later and the shaking and humming stopped, lights going back to blue.  
  
“I created a way to shut down the programming in Shiro’s arm, and all its commands,” Pidge replied to Hunk’s tentative question. The silence rang. “I never thought I’d have to use it.”  
  
It wasn’t silence that fell on them but absence of noise, the reflection of five people realizing that one of them had anticipated another they trusted to go exactly the way things had gone.  
  
They were so _young_.  
  
Shiro padded to Pidge’s side, rubbing his head against her hip. He was glad she had done it, glad she hadn’t trusted the arm and what it could represent, glad she had thought about safety first and trust second.  
  
“What—“ He pushed against her more forcefully until she scratched his head. “Are you thanking me, buddy?”  
  
“The wolf is right. We’re… going to have to come to terms with what Shiro did, but first we need to thank you, Pidge,” Allura said.  
  
“What Shiro did? How do we know he wasn’t forced to do it?” That was Lance, still believing the best of Shiro—or who he thought was Shiro.  
  
“We don’t have the time to spend on conjectures. We need to check the Castle can handle a fight and recharge the Lions. Lotor is out there, and I doubt he will let us live without a fight,” Allura said, straightening up. “We’re on his way to the gate.”  
  
“Well said Princess! Hunk, Pidge, I could use your help to divert power to the main turbine to turn the castle back on and check our systems,” Coran said.  
  
“Lance and I will return to the bridge. Keep your comms on.”  
  
Shiro choose to follow Allura and Lance back to the bridge. There wasn’t much he could do, but he could keep out of the way while they all worked to reboot the castle—and try to stop thinking about his arm nearly killing them.  
  
Krolia and Romelle left the bridge where they had stayed after the second reboot attempt failed, going to help out in the engine rooms. Shiro considered leaving as well, letting Allura and Lance have a moment—Allura was beating herself up for helping Lotor. Shiro was glad to see that Lance and Allura’s friendship had deepened enough to carry comfort and familiarity. He stood up to leave them—and stopped, Keith’s voice contacting the Castle. The reveal that the other Shiro was a clone was taken rather better than he would have thought. Shiro closed his eyes briefly; at least this wasn’t still hanging over them. At least now the team knew it hadn’t been him, not completely.  
  
Lotor going back to them and the quintessence field was to be expected. All too soon, Shiro was the only one on the bridge, pacing the length of it while listening to the comms: Coran, Krolia and Romelle working on the Castle, Allura, Lance, Pidge and Hunk fighting Lotor, Keith last, flying to them and running out of time.  
  
His claws clicked on the metallic floor. There it was, the monster running on his heels he couldn’t dodge anymore: he couldn’t help them like this, couldn’t help anyone. Shiro stopped, closed his eyes again. That wasn’t true. He had been thrown off balance since seeing the other who shared his face. Was he part of what Haggar had said, when they had fought what seemed a lifetime ago, that he, Shiro, could have been their greatest weapon? She had taken his identity, who he was, had used it against his friends. Did the clone knew—who he was and wasn’t? Depending on the answer, he was a victim of Haggar, too.  
  
The battle was a mess of screaming and shaking, the castle still not at one hundred percent of its functionality. The Lions were getting too damaged to continue against Lotor’s version of Voltron for much longer. Hearing Keith’s voice confirm he was in-system was a relief. Shiro ran, following Coran to the hangar where the incoming, the Black Lion’s escape pod, was coming in.  
  
It was the clone. He was unconscious, bruised, missing his right arm and to Shiro’s nose and sense, he smelled wrong, nothing like he had smelled and felt before from him. Krolia carried the body to the medical pod, Coran making the adjustments. They smelled wrong, too, like salt, like sadness.  
  
“Keith said he was a clone,” Krolia said, “But no cloning process I’m aware of create a perfect replica of a man to the point his friends believe he is the same person.”  
  
“I’m afraid you will know more than I on this subject—I am not aware of the latest ten thousand deca-phoebs of development in that direction.” Coran sighed. “All I can think of are the works of Haggar and her druids. At the beginning of the war, what she could do was beyond altean alchemy; I shudder to think what ten thousand deca-phoebs of single-minded experimentation with nearly unlimited quintessence led to.”  
  
That was what Shiro was smelling: quintessence, or the harsh, cold-smelling lack of it. Compared to Krolia and Coran, the other Shiro was an absence, a hole to Shiro’s sense that could navigate with solar currents. He cast his sense out, hunting for the bright thread that had led him to Keith; it was larger and warmer now, not just from proximity but also like it was channeled through something wider… something larger than human comprehension like the essence of the Black Lion.  
  
Shiro felt it the first time Lotor created a wormhole, tearing through the fabric of quintessence that existed beyond everything. He yelped in surprise. He felt the others, one after the other, the space beyond the castle so torn he wondered how Krolia and Coran couldn’t feel it too. It felt like the worst migraine he had ever experienced, overwhelming and disorienting.  
  
There were no open comms in the medbay. When Krolia came back—when had she left?—it was to take the medical pod, her demeanor harried.  
  
“Come on,” she told Shiro. “We’re evacuating the Castle.”  
  
Shiro cocked his head to the side, asking for more information. Krolia made quick work of the controls of the pod, switching it to its independent power and to the horizontal to carry it away. “The fight created rifts in reality, and they are growing. They decided our best bet to shut down the process was to overload the teludav to mimic the gravity of a black hole.”  
  
This wasn’t the most outlandish plan Shiro had heard—but blowing out the Castle, all that was left of Altea to Coran and Allura? No matter, this wasn’t his decision to take. Shiro ran to the side of the medbay where the most recent supplies were to grab them, not trusting his ability to teleport with his head throbbing in pain. When Krolia left the medbay for the Black Lion, pod and a crate of medical supplies in tow, he followed her.  
  
Walking up into the Lion was like coming home. Shiro’s migraine eased up slightly, as if his senses were cushioned inside the Lion.  
  
Keith quickly joined them, two bags of clothes and memory pads with him. He looked just as terrible as the other Shiro did, hurt and bruised and exhausted, a new, vivid burn scar on his face. Shiro came to sit next to him when Keith took the controls, leaning against his leg.  
  
“I’m alright,” Keith told him. Shiro huffed. “I’m not lying!” Shiro said nothing. “I’ll tell you what happened later.”  
  
They did not look back until the shockwave of the teludav meltdown came and went, feeling like the worst atmospheric re-entry.  
  
“Everyone ok?” Keith called.  
  
“I’m good,” Krolia answered. Shiro huffed, nudging Keith’s leg; he didn’t feel like his head was going to split open anymore.  
  
The other Lions sounded off, everyone unharmed by the explosion. All that was left of the Castle was a diamond Hunk caught, the victory bittersweet.  
  
“We should find someplace to land,” Keith told everyone, “to recoup and see if we can do something for Shiro.”  
  
“You mean Evil Shiro who almost killed us?” Lance said. “I don’t feel super comfortable with that.”  
  
“He is dangerous,” Pidge said, “but we also don’t know who exactly he was working for, how long he was Shiro, or if he even knew he wasn’t the Shiro we knew.”  
  
“He’s still Shiro,” Keith told them, closing the conversation.  
  
“Keith is right,” Allura said, “and we need a break. The last quintants have been non-stop. We need to at least walk in the sun, see each other in person, and start contacting our allies.”  
  
Shiro noted she hadn’t said anything about the other Shiro.  
  
Keith and Krolia took the pod out when they landed, the Lions sitting in a circle. Shiro followed them, not leaving the pod from his sight for an instant. Coran took a look at the control pad, frowned.  
  
“There has been no change in his condition. He wasn’t in there long, but the pod can pick up even minute changes! This is beyond what I can help with.”  
  
“Allura,” Keith said. She was standing angled to him and the pod, arms crossed, hands on her elbows. “You know alchemy, is there anything you can do?”  
  
“I don’t know what I can do to help, Keith.” She glanced to the pod and down. “I could check if he is still there, or if he is connected to the Shiro we knew first.”  
  
Keith opened the pod, cradling Shiro’s body in his arms. He lowered them both to the ground, him sitting, the other Shiro laying half reclined on his chest. “Anything,” he said.  
  
Shiro came closer, smelling the other Shiro. The harsh absence of the smell of quintessence was still there, like a void. There was the smell of salt on his face. Shiro laid down, his body against the other’s. The other was too cold.  
  
Allura kneeled down on the other side, laid her hands on the other Shiro’s temples. Her eyes closed, and there was no sound. Lance, Coran, Hunk, Pidge, Romelle and Krolia were all there too, waiting.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Allura said, folding her hands back in her lap. “There’s nothing else I can do. He has been drained of quintessence, there’s nothing left but a thread of Shiro’s essence, and nothing else but stars.”  
  
“There has to be _something_ we can do!”  
  
“The pod has enough energy to remain in stasis for a few decaphoebs, but that would only delay the inevitable,” Allura said, sadness heavy in her voice. “No body can live without their quintessence.”  
  
“He…” Keith stopped, started again. “When I followed him, he led me to a factory in orbit around a planet. There were rows and rows of pods, all with a Shiro in or… someone with Shiro's face. Everything was destroyed in the fight, his arm was activated by the factory, became a canon. It destroyed everything. Who knows how many were made, how many died.”  
  
“Then how can we know if Shiro really ever came back? From Kerberos, or from the fight with Zarkon?” Pidge asked. Her hand closed in a fist next to where her bayard was stored, her eyes fixed on the unconscious body of the other Shiro.  
  
“Regardless of who he is or is not, we can't just sit around and wait for him to stop breathing!” Lance exclaimed. “That’s just wrong! And I know I said I didn’t feel super comfortable with helping evil Shiro, but letting him die in front of our eyes is even more wrong than that.”  
  
“If we put him back in the pod and in stasis, how long will it last?” Hunk asked. He raised one hand to stall Allura’s repeating what she had already said. “I’m not asking about his chances of survival, I'm asking about how much power is left and how long that gives us to find a possible solution.”  
  
Coran answered that, checking the power indicator and counting on his fingers: “Without the additional input of power from the castle systems, the pod is energy sufficient to keep a body in full stasis for—oh, 5 decaphoebs! Of course, finding an additional power source to extend that would be quite easier than finding a full castle. Those pods were made to be easy to power and interchangeable, for good reasons.”  
  
Shiro barked at them all. The clone was getting colder despite Keith’s body, Shiro’s bulk and the warmth of the sun, his breathing going slower and shallower with every breath. He needed to get back in the pod, if only to get a chance; there was no time to stand around and talk.  
  
Keith squared his shoulders, tightening his grip on the other Shiro’s body. “We're putting him back in the pod and in stasis, and we can reach out to our allies who have medical facilities that aren't ten thousand years old. There’s enough space in Black to keep him there.”  
  
Shiro got up to let him and Krolia do just that. It was still deeply disturbing to see his face on someone else—and to see that face vanish behind the stasis field. The whole group followed the pod inside of the Black Lion.  
  
Pidge piped up next, screen up on her wrist. “I’ve been sending hails since we landed but I can’t get a pingback from anyone from the Coalition. We need a better vantage point, or to be in space, there might be distortions to the signal I can’t see from the ground.”  
  
“We’re not going anywhere until the Lions have had a chance to recharge their power cores,” Hunk said, “And we’ve taken the time to recharge ourselves, at least eat and sleep a bit.”  
  
“Without the Castle, recharging the Lions to full power is going to take longer than anyone wants,” Allura said.  
  
“Well, we are on the Dalterian Belt,” Coran said, “we could find faunatonium to speed up the process for the Lions as a temporary solution—it’s also home to several dozen species of delicacies even human systems would enjoy.”  
  
“Coran, how many people do you need to find this stuff?” Keith asked. He rubbed his face. Shiro got closer to him, and the familiarity of Keith’s hand falling on his back was welcome.  
  
“As many as wish to come, quite honestly. The more hands we have, the more we’ll be able to harvest—and that goes for the food as well.”  
  
“Ok, then you and whoever wants to go should go find the faunatonium. I’ll stay to guard the Lions.”  
  
“I’ll stay as well,” Krolia said.  
  
“And me,” Allura was the last one. “I’d like to ask you more about the factory you saw Keith, if you don’t mind.”  
  
Keith looked at the pod in their midst. “Yeah,” he said, “Okay.”  
  
“We’ll be on our way then,” Coran said to cut the sudden silence that had fallen on them. “Who’s with me?”  
  
Shiro watched as everyone save for Keith, Krolia, Allura and him left.  
  
“Come on,” Krolia told Shiro, her long fingers scratching behind his left ear. “Me and you are going to go pick up firewood.”  
  
Shiro was reluctant to leave Keith’s side; he made a noise.  
  
Keith looked down at him. “I’ll be ok. I’d prefer you didn’t hear it.”  
  
Shiro made a noise again. Keith’s smell had changed—he was lying, but which part of his answer was the lie?  
  
“Go,” Keith said. He turned to Allura, who had watched the exchange with furrowed brows. “What is it you want to know?”  
  
Shiro followed Krolia outside with a last look inside. He had to run to catch up to her long strides. She glanced at him. A few hundred meters away, a forest rose, gold and pink.  
  
“They could do with having a moment alone. Being a leader is never easy—easier to pretend it is when there’s no-one else around.”    
  
It wasn’t just being a leader. Keith still looked awful, had clearly fought the other Shiro, and Shiro only wanted to make sure he was okay, that Allura was okay after losing her home. On the other hand—his mind wandered on declinations of “on the other paw,” a hint if he needed one that he was squirting the edge of exhaustion—Shiro knew exactly what she was talking about. He had hidden in his room in the first few weeks he was on the Castle just to breathe, battling the consequences of his year as a prisoner, not knowing what had happened, and being pushed to the forefront of an universal war without knowing how long he’d be able to fight.  
  
“And I wanted to make sure you took a break, too,” Krolia continued, surprising him. He turned to her, and she smiled softly. “I didn’t forget your reaction to getting on the Castle. You knew something was wrong.”  
  
He shrugged, the gesture strangely human on his wolf body. The edge of the forest was there in front of them now, the vegetation very earth-looking in a way he hadn’t seen until now.  
  
“Are you feeling better now?”  
  
He picked a piece of wood. He would be. They had things to do.  
  
+++  
  
Seeing Allura, Lance, Hunk, Pidge, Keith, Krolia, Romelle and Coran all sitting around a fire inside the protective circle of the Lions while overhead the stars burned seemed surreal. Here Shiro was, with his people, in a wolf body.  
  
Coran had led his group to finding the elements that was now recharging the Lions several dozen times faster than on their own, and to gather large quantities of foraged food. The tubers held with branches over the flames tasted like corn dogs to Shiro’s memories, not that he could be sure corn dogs tasted the same to him now than they did as a human.  
  
“So news and plans, let’s sound off: I spend most of my time since we got the faunatonium sending messages and waiting for pingbacks from the Coalition. So far, nothing,” Pidge said, gesturing with a spoon full of something Shiro had sniffed and turned away from.  
  
“Same for me and the Blade of Marmora,” Krolia said. “No answer on any channel.”  
  
“The Princess and I came to the conclusion that we need a ship that can take over the role of the Castle of Lion,” Coran said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have those plans.”  
  
“You mean the plans of the Castle?” Keith asked. He pushed the tubers off his plate and to Shiro.  
  
“Yes. We took the main datacore of the Castle with us of course, but it both wasn’t able to completely gather all the knowledge of the Castle’s databanks, and was partially corrupted by the shockwave. The only person in the universe who would have those plans and blueprints is Commander Holt, on Earth.”  
  
Shiro raised his head sharply. “We’re going home?” Hunk whispered. Lance was looking equally shocked and happy.  
  
“Oh,” was all Pidge said.  
  
“Looks like we’re going to introduce you to Earth,” Keith said to the Alteans. Shiro stood up to sit on his haunches, leaning against Keith shoulder to shoulder. They were almost the same height, sitting like this. “What do you think,” Keith asked him, “Fancy visiting Earth?”  
  
What was Earth for him now? He leaned his head on Keith’s shoulder, seeking the contact and the reassurance.  
  
“One thing tho: what’s the wolf’s name anyway,” Lance said, pointing at them with the burrito-looking parcel Hunk had given him. Next to him, Hunk was creating another one for Romelle who seemed fascinated with the process.  
  
“Why does he need a name?” The scowl was audible in Keith’s voice.  
  
“Well we can’t just call him the wolf forever, we should come up with a name for him,” Hunk said.  
  
“Not gonna happen,” Keith replied, biting into his food.  
  
“Oh come on! I vote Kosmo,” Hunk said, raising his hand.  
  
“I like Kosmo,” Allura said.  
  
“Thirded, that’s a cool name!” Lance finished.  
  
“I figure when he's ready he'll tell me his name,” Keith said to stop them, and there was a collective groaning in answer. Even Romelle and Coran joined.  
  
“So it’s Kosmo, got it,” Lance said, a little flatly.  
  
Shiro shook his head then huffed. Keith twitched under him, probably from the warm air suddenly blown next to his neck.  
  
“Don't huff at me, huff at them, I’m good with never calling you anything other than the wolf if you're okay with it.”  
  
Shiro nodded and huffed again.  
  
“No Kosmo for you, huh?” Keith said, raising his hand to scratch Shiro’s head.  
  
Shiro shook his head in answer, let himself be scratched. He already had a name. He didn't need another, didn’t want another, even if it was one that belonged to the stars just as much as he belonged to them. He looked up, beyond the circle of light cast by the fire and the high spirits of people who were finally going home.  
  
+++  
  
Several nights into their trip back to Earth—a trip that would take them a year and a half—aboard the Black Lion, Keith saw Shiro. It was strange, Keith could have sworn he was asleep, and at the same time he felt something like the strange unreality of a dream, the lack of urgency at facing someone he trusted and who had tried to kill him the last time he had seen him awake—and Shiro’s body, the clone, was still in stasis in the pod, couldn’t have came out of it on his own. Plus, Keith didn't keep blue and grey japanese-looking pajamas. Shiro looked comfortable in them, forearms—both forearms, flesh and metal—and shins bare, sitting cross legged in the hold of the Black Lion opposite Keith.  
  
“They are _jinbei_ , summer clothes, not really pajama. I hadn't worn any in years,” dream Shiro said. Of course dream Shiro could read his mind. “I’m not really reading your mind either, more… as if we are both on the same frequency. I think Black is helping.” There was a distant rumble, a feeling of agreement that punctuated dream Shiro’s statement.  
  
Keith settled on his side, further into the nest of blankets and bags of clothes he had built on the first day of the trip. He let himself look at Shiro, not really touching on any of the implications of his words yet. Shiro… looked good, grounded in his skin in a way Keith had never really seen him be before. The not-pajama _jinbei_ looked like a coordinated kimono-like top with sleeves falling above Shiro's wrists and shorts that stopped below his knees. The marks from his year as a prisoner of the Galra Empire that he had always kept covered were in full view, the rough circles of still pinkish skin around his flesh wrist and ankles, the bite mark around one shin, the puncture marks of it deeper near the knee. The crossed neckline gaped, showing collarbones with precise, unnatural marks, and the shadows of deeper scars.  
  
Shiro was barefoot, long feet pale in the dim internal light of Black, and that alone seemed the most off of the whole picture.  
  
“This isn't a dream.”  
  
Shiro shook his head. “It's been a long two years—or… however it really has been. I’m sorry I left you the way I did.”  
  
Keith felt heat behind his eyes, of fear and anger and sadness. He didn't want to hear it. He didn't want this to be Shiro’s last words, the final proof Shiro was dead, had died alone in the black somewhere no-one knew where he was, who he was. “You've been trying to tell me you were going to die for years and I never wanted to hear about it. I still don’t want to hear it. I will save you because _you are not dead_.”  
  
Shiro smiled, shook his head again. “But Keith, I thought you wanted me to tell you my name when I was ready?”  
  
Keith sat up, eyes wide. “What?”  
  
Shiro's _jinbei_ was the exact color of the wolf’s coat, deep blue with thin light grey and electric blue-green stripes. Shiro blinked, a half smile on his face, and there was a flash of color in his eyes, reflective yellow-gold in a stark contrast to dark grey.  
  
The wolf was a person and the person was Shiro.  
  
Keith threw the blankets away, knees hitting the cold floor hard until he was a handspan away from Shiro, Shiro who hadn't moved, Shiro who was the wolf and this wasn't a dream. Keith didn’t dare touch him in case it would make him vanish in smoke. “How?!”  
  
“I have Black to thanks for it.” He closed his eyes, opened them again. “I’m sorry, Keith. I died.”  
  
Keith gasped, the refusal on his lips, confusion and pain raging. Shiro continued before he could say anything: “In the fight with Zarkon, my body was destroyed. I think the Black Lion caught most of my essence—this part isn’t very clear, still. Not everything was saved. Next thing I know, I was born significantly furrier than I used to be. Then I found you.” He smiled. “You saved me, again.”  
  
“That’s why you panicked when you came to the Castle, the other was there and he wasn’t you—“  
  
Shiro nodded. “It was disturbing. Here he was, standing in my place. Now… now he’s one more person Haggar hurt—because he was created from me. I hope we can find a way to help him.”  
  
“You think we can?”  
  
“He’s me, was me.” Again that half of a smile, the one that was never about happiness: “We never learned the meaning of giving up, after all. I saw him as an echo in here a few times before.” The inside of the Black Lion vanished. In its place, there were entire galaxies floating past and below them, no sense of up and down despite the fact they were on the same apparent plane. Keith looked up and around, seeing no end to the space.  
  
“Here? Where are we exactly?”  
  
“In the Black Lion. I think it’s where I was for a time, where the Black Lion goes when it teleports. I know I fought Zarkon here.” Shiro leaned back on his arms. “Being there, being in Black, is a little like recharging. I’m not strong enough to manifest completely in your environment yet.”  
  
“Can you—can you come back? As yourself?”  
  
“I don’t know. I think…the longer I stay near the Black Lion and you, the more strength I have to talk to you, to show my human body.” Shiro raised his head. “Ah. I think I’m hitting my limit for now.”  
  
The stars sped by them.  
  
When Keith opened his eyes, he was laying in the nest of blankets and bags of clothes he had built on the first day of the trip inside the Black Lion. He could hear the soft breathing of his mother in the cockpit.  
  
He could feel the wolf’s warmth against his back.  
  
Keith turned quickly, not letting himself the time to think, to wonder if his dream had been one or had been reality. “Shiro?”  
  
The wolf raised his head, eyes open wide. _Keith? What—?_  
  
Keith threw his arms around him, face pressed tight against him. “I can hear you. I can hear you, it wasn’t a dream.”  
  
_Keith. Thanks for saving me, on the whale._  
  
“As many times as it takes. I missed you.”  
  
_I missed you too._  
  
Keith didn’t let go for a long, long time.  



End file.
